Thanks, Jim, for the clarifications
Peter
From: Jim Amsden [mailto:jamsden@us.ibm.com]
Sent: 02 July 2009 01:14
To: Peter F Brown (Pensive SA)
Cc: Heather Kreger; soa-rm-ra@lists.oasis-open.org; James Odell
Subject: Re: JIM: PLEASE RESPOND: RE: [soa-rm-ra] FW: Title for WP
Peter,
OMG has already
agreed to allow its logo to be displayed on the paper, a vote is not required
to do this, or to publish the paper. A vote in OMG on a "discussion
paper" has little formal meaning other than to raise the level of
awareness and opportunity for further discussion in a particular area in order
to possibly influence future work. A version of the paper has already been
placed in the OMG document library, and has been distributed to OMG members for
review. We can easily provide updates to that paper as either replacements to
the current document, or a new document if needed. There is more flexibility
for discussion papers than for adopted standards.
The OMG process
is to review documents well before they are voted on. This paper is available
for review now, and there's no barrier to publishing an updated version that
addresses issues raised so far. The formal procedure for OMG documents that are
to considered for vote at a meeting is that the document must be published in
the document library and distributed to the proper task forces and technical
committees at least four weeks before the meeting where the vote will occur.
We should be able to do that easily, but there's no reason to not start
the reviews now.
So let's get
this on people's vacation reading list!
Jim Amsden, Senior Technical Staff Member
Rational Enterprise Architecture Management
919-461-3689
"Peter
F Brown (Pensive SA)" <peter@pensive.eu>
07/01/2009
03:54 PM
|
To
|
"James
Odell" <email@jamesodell.com>
|
cc
|
<soa-rm-ra@lists.oasis-open.org>
|
Subject
|
RE:
[soa-rm-ra] FW: Title for WP
|
|
How
do the (last minute) changes made by OMG affect the vote/decision already taken
by our TC?
Do
we need to vote again?
Someone
could point out to OMG that OASIS doesn’t have a specific process for adopting
white papers either, but that didn’t stop us getting out of the door in a
timely manner.
14
September? So no-one is going to have this on their company approved vacation
reading lists...Pity
Peter
From: James Odell [mailto:email@jamesodell.com]
Sent: 01 July 2009 20:18
To: soa-rm-ra@lists.oasis-open.org RA
Subject: [soa-rm-ra] FW: Title for WP
Hi all,
There was no OMG vote in Costa Rica. Have forwarded the email of Jim
Amsden’s notes, below. The bottom line is that there can be no vote now
until the next OMG meeting (week of 14 September).
-Jim Odell
------ Forwarded Message
From: James Amsden <jamsden@us.ibm.com>
Date: Wed, 1 Jul 2009 13:07:17 -0400
To: James Odell <email@jamesodell.com>
Subject: Re: Title for WP
From my meeting notes:
SOA Joint Position Paper: OMG, OASIS and TOG
This presentation <http://www.omg.org/cgi-bin/doc?ad/2009-06-04> summarized the work Heather Kreger and
others in the development of a paper <http://www.omg.org/cgi-bin/doc?ad/2009-06-03> that positions various OMG, TOG and
OASIS SOA standards. generated a lot of conversation, but not necessarily the
intended/anticipated result. The paper covered the following main areas:
1. Positioning of Reference Models, Ontologies,
Reference Architectures and Modeling Languages,
2. A description of the current OMG, OASIS and TOG
standards around SOA,
3. Positioning of these standards in relationship to
each other
4. Areas of common agreement between the standards
5. Guidance for potential consumers of these
standards in order to get the most out of them in support of SOA initiatives
6. A statement of intent for future collaboration to
further support SOA adoption by minimizing fragmentation in the SOA standards
market place resulting from gaps and overlaps in standards produced by these
organizations
There are a number of facets to the discussion that need to be covered.
OMG Process: The OMG process is not very specific in dealing with white
papers similar to the one submitted in this meeting. The current Policies and
Procedures (P&P) don't address white papers, but apparently an older
version did have language about both white and green papers. The P&P
currently states the following concerning “discussion” papers:
This paper presents a discussion of technology issues considered in a
Special Interest Group of the Object Management Group. The contents of
this paper are presented to create discussion in the computer industry
on this topic; the contents of this paper are not to be considered an
adopted standard of any kind. This paper does not represent the
official position of the Object Management Group.
This raises a number of questions. Do SIGs vote to issue anything? Jim Odell
says they can vote on position papers, but everything else must be done through
a task force. Can a TF do the same things as a SIG? Yes, they can do anything a
SIG can do, as well as recommend adoption of specifications to the Architecture
Board. The Task Force can do what it likes, but all official OMG documents are
actually approved by the Architecture Board, Domain, and Platform Technical
Committees. If the TF did vote to issue a discussion paper, it would mean that
this is the position of the TF and could potentially effect future TF votes,
but would have no effect on OMG policies, position or standards.
OMG could use the recommendations in the white paper to evolve its Policies and
Procedures, but that is probably unnecessary as the they already cover liaisons
with other standards organizations and references to other related standards.
Document review comments: We got detailed review comments from Pete Rivett
(Adaptive) and Fred Cummins (HP). It was not clear that many other ADTF members
had read the paper yet. Pete and Fred had a lot of problems with the paper, and
they were quite different. However, what was common is that their issues were
about things that weren't actually in or implied by the paper! It appears early
copies of the paper, and calling it “SOA Harmonization” created an impression
and perspective that resulted in Pete and Fred addressing what they wished SOA
harmonization to be rather than the content and recommendations in the paper.
This was unfortunate, and was promoted by speculation from others who hadn't
read the paper but projected their own ideas about SOA harmonization being
about how the standards need to be changed to be aligned. Although this may be
a desirable eventual goal, it was not the purpose of this paper. Rather this
paper address how to make the best use of the standards that already exist.
Late changes: There was a flurry of changes made to the paper from late the
week before the OMG meeting right up to the ADTF meeting, with an updated draft
being sent in email during the meeting. This left the ADTF members wondering exactly
what they might be voting on and an uneasy feeling that there may have been a
lot of late changes indicating lack of common agreement. This was not actually
the case. Most of the changes were editorial dealing with organization logos,
copyright notices, positioning of the attribution list, whether it was a White
Paper or just a paper, etc.
I tried to address all of these concerns in the ADTF presentation, in
particular by providing slides that described the non-goals as well as the
goals, a clearer positioning of standard types (RM, Ontology, RA and Modeling
Language), and a summary of the recommendations for using the standards. This
appeared to go over well. However, it was clear that the OMG community did not
have time to sufficiently review the final version of the paper, especially in
light of the clarifications in the presentation. And we needed time to decide
what to do with the paper. The conclusion was:
1. There would be no vote of any kind in ADTF or the
TCs this meeting.
2. We will propose an agenda item for the SOA
Consortium for the next OMG meeting at San Antonio in September
3. We will attempt to leverage the potential
collaboration between the standards organizations by getting get a statement of
support from the SOA Consortium for the standards positioning and usage
guidance in the paper, and some statement about leveraging existing liaison
relationships to foster further collaboration in support of successful SOA
community adoption
4. The ADTF will have a vote to recommend issuance
of the paper as an OMG discussion paper for the purpose of stimulating
additional discussion and influence on future standards activities concerning
SOA
5. We will then have a vote to adopt the position
paper in the AB, Domain and Platform TCs based on the recommendation from the
ADTF. This is because SOA crosses both the Domain and Platform TCs, and the
paper proposes collaboration that should be addressed by the AB.
The effect of these adoptions will be only to indicate that the paper will be
introduced formally as a discussion paper for consideration by the various
effected task forces. It will simply raise the visibility of the paper, and its
recommendations for specification positioning and use, and for future collaboration.
Jim Amsden, Senior Technical Staff Member
Rational Enterprise Architecture Management
919-461-3689
------ End of Forwarded Message